April started with a bang. (Or rather, a crash.)

For those of you who acknowledge my existence, my usual persistent presence on the net might be missed these last few days. That is because Larry (my laptop) crashed on me on the 1st of April. I know, I know, the timing might seem suspicious. Believe me when I say that I thought a great cosmic April's Fools joke was being played on me. But soon after, I realised that I doubt some cosmic power would want to play a joke on a small fish like me.

So I survived the past few days without a computer and believe me, it's no easy feat. Something was sorely missing in my room. The usual centrepiece was gone and the room lost its focus and it was soon felt unbearable to be in it. So the days were spent idling around in computer labs and library and God knows where trying to shave those painful minutes, and even seconds, until my precious comes back to me.

The promised three day service was kept but I couldn't get it until Friday. So I rushed there first thing in the morning and finally I got my baby back. The happiness quickly turned to despair though. I soon found out that the entire hard disk has been wiped out. Completely. Both drives. I tried to remember the things that I kept there. It's like the past two years of my life has been yanked out of my brain and deleted. It's gone, unretrievable. It was painful, and sad. Sure, I lost my games, my application programs and what nots. A couple of movies and clips and the music files (the entire 10GB) were lost too. And then the hard truth hit me. I lost all of Fie's writings, my own writings, msn conversations, pictures and photographs, documents and all the other weird funny things that I've found in the net. All of them. Gone.

I spent the whole afternoon trying to piece together anything that I could find. Re-downloading programs, scouring the net for that one particular picture, finding an old website of a JC friend that has my old class pictures, and trying to find out any redundancy of my old files. I could barely find some of it. The rest? I don't even want to think about it.

It's funny that a few days back, my phone inbox was wiped out too. Coincidence? Perhaps it's a sign. To move on. To start anew. A clean slate. To forget about the past and embrace the future. Perhaps it's a sign to really appreciate what I have right here and right now, instead of regreting on what could've or should've later on.

Or maybe the computer is just plain lousy.